I've endured significant challenges in my life, but they're not related to my race (ORM) or SES. I've had a highly abusive father for my whole life, and the abuse took an extreme turn in middle school and high school. My mother was gaslighted into thinking that if she called the police and my father was taken away, he would destroy her life and mine. Lots of murder attempts, threats, etc. When I went off to college, I was still financially beholden to him, so the abuse continued through phone calls, texts, etc. Because I came from a family and background that's anti-therapy, I did not seek it in college out of fear that my parents would see it in an insurance bill. This lead to me being in MUCH worse situations in my research lab, where I endured pretty severe abuse, but thought that if I spent all of my afternoons, evenings, and weekends there, I could finally go to a good med school and be free of everything (LOL).
Things got worse and worse until I had to report my PI and a grad student to Title IX. However, my research work was successful and I got a perfectly good rec from my PI (found out about this from someone who read her rec). After graduating, I finally sought out therapy. I still deal with some bullies (e.g. one in my current lab--once I complained to my now-PI, he all but silenced her! very impressive), but I'm MASSIVELY better. To tell the truth, the accumulation of traumatic experiences over several years probably resulted in mild PTSD with pretty severe anxiety and depression that no one could easily see. Luckily, I don't think there's a formal diagnosis on my medical record or anything. Anyway, can I talk about these challenges in the context of "I endured x, learned y, and healed through z, providing insight q"? I often hear about such topics being taboo, and....it's not fair. It's not fair at all. I endured so much violence and really did well in spite of it all, and worked very hard with my therapist to go through CBT and restructure my thinking for the better...how can this not be significant?
In terms of other positive changes, I've encouraged my mother to go to physical therapy (success), mental therapy (after covid is over to avoid my father hearing her conversations), start doing things she loves again, and have invested into a large collection of specific art pieces to fulfill a life-long interior decoration dream that my father constantly stamped down. The latter could also be used as a "diverse personality quirk" and be used to briefly allude to the past abuse..."i collect this beautiful cool thing directly from artisans in x country, this is the artistic and economic significance, i do it to help my mother and i heal from this trauma...beautiful moving story etc. etc."
anyway, what do the experts think? for further context, I am applying to MD/PhD programs.
